Saturday, April 18, 2009

Integrity and Teutonic Knights

I read this article while looking for a Hanseatic League ref. It's a neat example of integrity as workability rather than as good or bad. (Luther arguing against the Pope's order that the Knights Templar reform and be more monastic). I'm sticking it in here so I don't lose it, i don't have any other point. It caught my attention.

It's from here:

Luther saw this, and inaugurated a different kind of reform. He seized a favorable opportunity, and exhorted the Knights, in a public address, March 28, 1523, to forsake the false monastic chastity so often broken, and to live in true matrimonial chastity according to the ordinance of God in paradise (Gen. 2:18), which was older and wiser than popes and Councils. "Your order," he argued, "is truly a singular order: it is both secular and spiritual, and neither; it is bound to wield the sword against infidels, and yet to live in celibacy, poverty, and obedience, like other monks. These things do not agree together, as is shown by reason and by daily experience. The order is therefore of no use either to God or the world."787

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